Kind words for the man who loved my wife
Words change in their meaning, and if one is not careful, it can lead
to misunderstandings. When I tell people I worked in a bathhouse as a
youth, they give me some very strange looks, but in those days a
bathhouse was simply a place where you changed into a bathing suit
that you had rented.
The same with “swinging.” When I say that back in the ‘60s, Corona
del Mar was quite the swinging place, I do not mean that people were
swapping mates. I am using the word in the earlier sense, as it
derived from music -- to swing, to have the beat -- and I mean that
there was a lot of fun going on.
One of the centers of this fun was a shack perched on the hill
above Bayside Drive where Ernie Cantu resided with Tommy Thompson.
With two bachelors in residence, it was pretty much a nonstop party.
We got invited to a lot of the festivities because Ernie had become a
good friend of ours. That we were older than he by a decade or more
never seemed to matter.
I met him at Little Corona, where he soon became the ringmaster of
a never-ending gin game with my wife, Katie. They would sit there by
the hour, playing hand after hand, punctuated by occasional
triumphant cries of “Gin!” followed, if Ernie was victorious, by
Katie’s strongest epithet, “Suzie Rottencrotch!”
Cards weren’t the only thing Katie and Ernie enjoyed. Like my
wife, Ernie was a fabulous dancer. If there was any fly in the
ointment of my marriage, it was my lack of dancing ability. The only
dance I ever really mastered was the Twist, and even then I was told
I looked like Ichabod Crane fleeing from the headless horseman.
But Ernie knew every dance there was, and every party was an
opportunity for he and Katie to show their stuff. I didn’t mind
sitting it out, but it must have been hard on Ernie’s date to watch
him spend all his time dancing with someone else.
The truth is that Ernie was in love with Katie. He was always the
perfect gentleman and never made the slightest move, but if a truck
had run me over, he would have been the first in line to comfort my
widow.
Ernie had nothing but respect for Katie. For him, she was the
epitome of a lady.
I remember one party. Everyone had been drinking, and one young
woman who was in the kitchen decided to take off her sweater and
display herself. The men, as you can imagine, were watching with
interest -- until Katie came in.
Ernie wasn’t about to have Katie exposed to that scene. He pulled
the young woman’s sweater back on, she tried to pull it off, he put
it back on. It was quite a wrestling match, but Ernie prevailed.
One night, the three of us went to Reuben’s for dinner. Katie
loved jokes, and at one point, when Ernie’s attention was drawn
elsewhere, Katie put a peanut in her nose and gestured to me to do
the same.
Of course, we both expected Ernie to turn around immediately and
laugh when he saw us with these peanuts hanging out of our noses, but
Ernie didn’t turn around. There we were, in the middle of Reuben’s,
peanuts dangling from our noses like obscene boogers, and our
audience refused to look at us. The waitress came by, saw us and did
a very good job of not dropping her tray.
I was beginning to fear the peanuts were going to become a
permanent part of our anatomy when, finally, Ernie turned around.
Without missing a beat, he put a peanut in his nose and went on with
his dinner.
It wasn’t gin, but he was definitely the winner.
* ROBERT GARDNER is a Corona del Mar resident and a former judge.
His column runs Tuesdays.
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